Deviation Leads to Aggravation

Incentives Matter

I just noticed today’s WSJ has an article about the tighter job market in the US and this accompanying graph listing the best-paid jobs. Economics does better than most while philosophy ranks below elementary education:

The question is, does the relative valuation of the professions tell us anything about the relative value of the graduates themselves?

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In answer to your question, yes, to a degree. Of course on the individual level an average starting salary is indeterminate, but as a group I propose that the salaries indicate something more than just ordinary supply and demand for the job.

This is an older study, but I’ve seen several like it over the past couple years. Essentially it indicates that teachers score less well than their non-teaching counterparts. Thus the chemistry teacher is [statistically] less intelligent than the industrial chemist (I use this example in part because my Dad has done both. He obviously was smarter while in Industry and switched over to Teaching once the fumes dumbed him down. Statistics never lie.). This tendency operates in spite of the increasing demand for more teachers.

Most of the professions in the bottom half of your graph are primarily teaching professions whereas the top half are less preponderantly education oriented.

The question is complicated because it can’t very easily be examined in a vaccuum. For example, There is a huge global demand for engineers, programmers, and other applied sciences, especially in the developing world. The supply of technically minded American graduates however is actually decreasing (per capita).